


hold it up to my cold heart (feel the way it used to start up.)

by serenitysea



Series: i didn't know that we could break a silver lining [6]
Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Fairy Tale Retellings, these feels are nothing we were ever trained for
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-30
Updated: 2015-01-30
Packaged: 2018-03-09 16:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3256304
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/serenitysea/pseuds/serenitysea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>skyeward does <i>snow white</i>. ...sort of.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hold it up to my cold heart (feel the way it used to start up.)

**Author's Note:**

> \+ this is weird and more than little terrible.  
> \+ hold your breath, kids.

 

 

* * *

 

 

 

This is a story about a girl and her most trusted companion.

Her mirror.

But it's not for the reasons you think and — we're getting ahead of ourselves here.

Let's start at the beginning.

*

There is a girl and a rumor that follows her.

A rumor that _death_ follows her.

It should be absurd really, because she's just a tiny infant. There is no way that death can follow an infant. Things don't work that way.

But there are people who are scared and there are believers turned fanatics and there is no middle ground when you are facing that kind of pressure.

So they make her disappear.

They banish the infant.

There's a tiny silver pocket mirror tossed into her bassinet and she's whisked off to parts unknown.

She is forbidden to ever come home.

*

She gets older and grows up.

(The mirror grows, too.)

*

Skye has moved around all of her life.

She found that she wasn't a _good fit_ in the few foster homes that had attempted to take her in and she always wound up back at the Orphanage.

When she is unpacking her things for the fourth time in as many months, she takes a good look at her surroundings. The same old dark room greets her with cobwebs in the corners and a faulty light on the desk. (She's tried replacing it many times but it never lasts. There's a metaphor in there that she isn't going to touch.)

Her clothes are all hand me downs and patched together with mismatched thread and buttons. She doesn't have anything that really matches, but it doesn't bother her because no one really matches at the Orphanage. That's why they're all here.

Unmatched pieces that belonged a set nobody wanted anymore.

The only thing she's got of any real value is a silver hand mirror. It's heavy and there is a weird dullness to the reflective surface no matter how many times she wipes it clean. (The nuns can't tell her where it came from or why she even has it — just that it came with her when she was dropped off in a basket — and that such a fine belonging requires daily attention. So yes. She cleans it every day.)

Every once in a while it catches the sun a certain way and sends shafts of blinding light careening into her dark room. She blinks steadily until her eyes stop watering and then tucks the mirror away.

She doesn't want anyone to steal it.

*

Years pass.

*

Skye leaves the Orphanage for good (finally) and strikes out on her own. Striking out is probably the best term for it, because she has a few sketchy nights where there isn't exactly a bed to lay her head on or a roof to cover her. She hates how dicey things get and vows never to be without a plan of some kind to ensure it never happens again. Even her escape routes have escape routes.

She tries her hand at computers — a totally new experience since they didn't really have one for the children to use back at the Orphanage — and finds out she's pretty good with them.

 _Weirdly_ good, actually.

So good, in fact, that she catches the eye of hacktivist group the Rising Tide and they set her up like a princess in an apartment with enough natural light that it banishes the reoccurring bad dreams she's had since forever and enough computer work to keep her busy for weeks.

It isn't home, but it _could_ be.

(For now, that's enough.)

*

Skye isn't the kind of person to dwell on thing she doesn't have the ability to change.

And while the apartment the Tide gave her is lovely, it doesn't feel like home. This is a problem she can solve, and she goes to sort through her miscellaneous boxes to see if there is anything she can to make it read more _lived in_ and less _Ikea Chic_.

The mirror tumbles out of a recycled throw blanket she'd scored at an open air market two years ago. The blanket is ripped and beat up and she'll never throw it away. She feels grateful the mirror is hearty enough to withstand a quick fall to the couch without breaking and picks it up, caressing the back lovingly.

The swirls and raised flowers warm under her skin and she flips it over, slightly surprised when the usually foggy glass reads clear and true. Her reflection is off somehow, but she can't figure out why.

Skye takes to keeping it by her pillow at night.

(Life makes more sense when it is laid out that way.)

*

She joins Shield as a consultant because she wants access to their computers — and because living in van is getting a little _too_ 'escape route ready,' even for her. She's desperately craving some kind of permanency and when Coulson offers that and more, she doesn't even have to think before saying yes.

She learns the dynamics of the team before she goes to sleep that night and they all begin to fit into little nooks and crannies in her heart, filling spaces and gaps she didn't know were empty.

She names them all.

Well, she values her life enough that she doesn't bother with naming Coulson or May — mostly May, because the woman was terrifyingly efficient and could probably read minds — so she avoids naming the adults entirely.

But it makes the kind of weird sense that has her heart at peace when she falls asleep each night and really it helps her understand what motivates each person and how best to proceed.

Jemma is obviously _Doc_. She takes care of them and makes sure everyone is eating properly, sometimes aggressively snatching junk food away and replacing it with healthy snacks such as peanut butter on celery sticks. ("Protein _and_ vegetables! And don't thumb your nose at my hard work either; someone has to keep you all alive, you know.")

Fitz is _Bashful_ if only because she likes to remind him how epically he'd choked when they were first on comms and he was talking about his "equipment." ("Oh _come on_ , aren't you a little sick of that joke now??")

And Ward — _well_.

Skye smiles to herself and tucks the silver mirror into her nightstand drawer. She always feels better when it's close by.

Ward is _Grumpy_.

("It's amazing how you think 8:07 is the same thing as 8 in the morning — also known as the time we begin training on weekends because you refuse to crawl out of bed earlier like a normal person and —")

 _Definitely_ Grumpy.

*

She really loves being around Fitz and Jemma. Sometimes when she's feeling restless, she'll go down to the lab and just listen to them talk. Their chatter washes over her like waves at the beach and it's weirdly calming enough that it can lull her into a pre-sleep mode. (Some people drink warm milk. She goes for FitzSimmons nerdspeak. Works every time.)

It's different with Ward. There is a fight and a push and pull that neither of them can fight against and one of these days, she's either going to kill him or jump him.

*

Skye isn't an especially vain person, so she forgets about the mirror (again) until she's running late for training (again) and she needs to make sure there's nothing crazy wrong with her face.

The reflection isn't entirely correct — the girl in the mirror has flushed cheeks and mischief dancing in her eyes and the kind of self satisfied smile that indicates she has a secret that she'll never tell because it's making her _glow_ with happiness.

Skye shakes her head and tosses the mirror gently on the bed, wondering what on earth possessed her to look in the damn thing today of all days.

(She should probably clean it tonight.)

*

She jumps him.

It's just —

Ward is doing the thing where clenches his jaw in frustration and she just _can't take it_ anymore —

She wonders what that stubborn cleft in his chin tastes like when she drags her teeth over it (pretty damn good, actually) and what it would feel like to glide her hands over his cheekbones as she pulled him closer into her mouth.

So when he goes off on one of his usual rants about punctuality and the importance of keeping commitments, Skye — and she isn't entirely proud of this; there may have been snacking and a LOST marathon with FitzSimmons last night, leaving her with about two hours of sleep on another sixteen hour day — zones out.

And then it's almost like her mind and body are two separate pieces because — all of the sudden, she's launching herself into his arms and he has no choice but to catch her as they stumble down on to the mats and she's seen that look in his eyes before when they first met and —

— she's had enough talking.

She kisses him.

*

It turns out that once Ward gets over his predictable outrage of breaking protocol ("Supervising Officers don't exactly go around planting one on their trainees, Skye." "Why _not_? I bet you it does wonders for the work/reward feedback thing.") he kind of _really_ gets into it.

Which is to say that Skye will find herself, at any given point of the day, dragged into corners and perfectly unnoticed dark spaces and then find herself hoisted up and braced against a wall as Ward just casually _plunders_ her mouth. Like it's no big deal. Like this is a perfectly normal thing that they do.

He winks at her and kisses the palm of her hand and later when she crawls into bed that night, there's a tiny flower on her pillow.

(The Tin Man has a heart after all.)

Just before bed, she checks her reflection in the mirror and all she can see is a softness to her sleepy face and the kind of happiness she's only ever read about in books.

*

The Beserker staff scares the hell out of her.

She's never seen Ward lose control like that and she's terrified of what he was forced to relive in order to help defeat the fanatics.

Thankfully they are not going to back to the Bus for the night and instead spend an evening at a rather swanky hotel. Skye knows that sleep will be hopeless tonight if she doesn't first consult the mirror and figure out how to play out the rest of the evening with Ward.

The mirror is hot to the touch like molten rock and she grips hard to keep it from tumbling free. The rage that transforms her face in the glass is dark and consuming and she has to wrench her eyes away from it with shaking hands that don't stop for another few minutes.

It's okay.

It didn't happen.

She never picked up the staff.

*

(That night she pours herself into Ward and buries everything she's got into burning the anger clean out of his system.)

They are both exhausted in the morning, but the dark shadows aren't in the back of his eyes anymore and he doesn't breathe like he's afraid something is going to take him down.

(She has bruises on her hipbones in the imprint of his fingers and wears them proudly.)

(They keep each other safe in the most unorthodox of ways — but it works for them.)

*

Good things don't have a habit of lasting and when she looks in the mirror just before leaving for the mission, a chill runs down her spine.

The reflection is that of a bloodstained version of herself, face devoid of all color while her demeanor gives the appearance of death warmed over.

Skye takes a deep breath and orders herself to calm down.

Nothing is going to happen.

Everything will be fine.

*

After Quinn fires the second bullet she can't help but flash back to the vision in the mirror and distantly admits that she might have been wrong about this one.

The mirror hadn't lied — her reflection is a ringer for the one she'd seen that morning.

Everything goes cold and black and she wonders if this is what dying feels like.

*

The hyperbaric chamber is like a glass coffin.

She has no awareness of being in it at all.

(Meanwhile Ward can think of nothing _but_.)

*

(The mirror frosts over like winter itself.

The silver tarnishes and the edges begin to blacken.)

*

They give Skye the GH-325 and nothing happens.

Well.

That isn't entirely true.

They give her the miracle drug and she _flatlines_.

There's a flurry of activity and some sort of ungodly _glow_ emanating from underneath her skin and Jemma is yelling at him, shoving him away and there's arms like steel banded around his shoulders and dragging him off and

Skye is arching off the bed in the kind of fluid movement that he's been trying to get her to achieve for _weeks_ and her eyes are open for a split second —

— He swears they lock and she recognizes him — _sees him_ — but just for a moment and then —

she's _crashing crashing crashing_

The bed nearly bends in half from the rapid movement and extreme force until _finally_

everything is blissfully silent.

*

The _beep beep_ of her heart monitor is the only thing keeping him halfway tethered to sanity.

*

He gets sloppy.

His head isn't in the game and everyone knows it.

Garrett looks near ready to flay him alive but everything that used to care and fear him feels dead inside and it's all Ward can do just to put one foot in front of the other.

There's some enemy fire and bullets ricocheting and when the dust has settled — and his adrenalin faded — a total of two and a half slugs are embedded in his arm and shoulder.

Jemma makes an extreme noise of distress and her hands are shaking as she tries to patch him back together.

He breathes through the relentless pain and wonders if it he should be relived that something actually registers these days.

"Simmons," Ward puts a gentle hand over hers, where it is trembling as she applies a bandage to his arm. "It's okay."

(He doesn't tell her that being this close to Skye makes him feel so much better. Doesn't want to acknowledge the dark voice in his head taunting that he got injured on purpose just to be closer to her.)

"I'm getting rather tired of stitching you all back together," she retorts sharply, her eyes betraying a glance to where Skye is still hooked up to all kinds of monitors and machines.

"At least we always come back."

"In _pieces_ ," she says, tightening the bandage until he makes a muttered sound of protest. Jemma half-smiles in satisfaction and poorly concealed worry. "I know you're going to stay in here with her, but can you at least try to get some sleep?"

Ward doesn't have to fake the relieved smile on his face. "Thanks."

*

Ward has approximately a day before Trip gets a nasty slice to his leg and actually needs the recovery and medical attention far more than he does.

(Garrett has always believed in paying debts in blood.)

But then the nasty slice winds up infected and they have to move Skye to keep her safe.

There's no where else to go — no other sterile environment that will not compromise her immune system — except for the hyperbaric chamber.

Ward helps load her inside with the aid of Coulson and Garrett as May and Jemma supervise the transfer. His hands are steady. He does not flinch, not once. The entire operation is done flawlessly in complete silence and no one dares to speak as Coulson keys in security so that Skye will be safe in her glass prison.

(Ward goes upstairs and calmly locks the door before throwing up until his ribs ache painfully.)

(It's almost a near match for how _wrecked_ he feels.)

*

Two weeks pass.

(It feels like two years.)

*

When he's hearing phantom giggles and seeing flashes of thick brown hair whipping around a corner — Ward decides he can't take it anymore.

He waits until nightfall and hunts down Fitz and Simmons and basically _begs_ them to find something for him to do. A way for him to fix Skye, to bring her back.

Fitz almost looks embarrassed when he reveals that there might be another option they hadn't yet considered. Jemma puts a hand to her head and winces in an expression torn between sympathy and embarrassment. He doesn't understand what would be so embarrassing, but then — Fitz tells him he has to kiss Skye, like he has some kind of magic lips that are going to reanimate her.

(Oh, if they only _knew_.)

Ward can barely muster up the incredulity they will be expecting from him because he is so busy feeling _relived_ that there's an option and one that bestows upon him the opportunity to kiss the woman he loves. They're expecting this to go smoothly because, honestly, they have nothing to lose. And as far as they know, he and Skye have never kissed before.

(He hasn't kissed her in weeks and it's like something is dying inside because she's surrounded night and day by machines and cameras.)

So they make a plan and each of them feel better afterwards.

He strolls past Skye's bunk that night and finds a silver engraved hand mirror on her pillow. He takes it with him, intending to put it inside the chamber for when she wakes up.

(She would probably want a mirror and say something like _i must look terrible_.)

(He'd give _anything_ for her standard of _terrible_.)

*

It seems so simple, really.

(He'd done it over a hundred times. Just had to lean down and kiss her.)

He is absolutely terrified it won't work.

But Ward looks up to see Jemma smiling tremulously, trying so hard to be supportive as Fitz gives him two encouraging thumbs up. They'd roped Trip in to act as a distraction for Coulson and May because they were likely to ask the kind of questions that Ward did not think now was an appropriate time to answer — if _ever_ — and he really, _really_ just needs Skye to wake up now.

He lets his hand hover over the keypad until the correct sequence of numbers unlock (another fancy invention Fitz had made to crack the impossible safes they ran into occasionally in the field) and stuffs the handy safe-cracking glove in his pocket. He tells himself that he needs to feel the petal soft texture of Skye's cheek before he actually loses his mind. He tells himself that she'd be laughing at him and teasing _get on with it, robot! i wanna see what you can do…_

Ward braces a hand on the side of the glass as Skye slides free from the chamber, looking peaceful and serene. It just looks like she is asleep. The kind of deep sleep that has no place for nightmares or dark circles under the eyes in the morning. The kind of sleep they all need, honestly.

He smooths the hair away from her face. Her skin is just as soft as he remembered. "C'mon, sleepyhead. Time to wake up."

Ward leans down and kisses her gently.

*

She never wakes up.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

*

There is a heaviness to her limbs that tell her moving them is going to be impossible. Time moves in the kind of ebb and flow that has her questioning how long her consciousness will last. She fights hard against the drowsiness threatening to drag her back under and emerges victorious, eyes fluttering open slowly. The sudden light is invasive even though she knows it's not as bright as it could be — and even breathing feels like agony.

When she finally musters up the strength to roll her head to the side, she catches sight of the mirror.

Her reflection is _absolutely terrifying_.

The worst part is how she can't even get her vocal cords to cooperate as she tries to scream.

( _she's forbidden to ever come home._ )

**Author's Note:**

> \+ [tumblr](http://b-isforbombshell.tumblr.com).


End file.
